Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last-- I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. Bertrand Russell
About This Quote

This quote is a great example of the power of raw emotion. It is a quote from a man who was once a slave, but now lives in Kenya as a minister. He was forced to live in misery and his own mind caused him to feel that he was no better than the person that held him captive. This quote really shows how raw emotions can be contagious and lead to happiness, rather than sadness.

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More Quotes By Bertrand Russell
  1. Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

  2. To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.

  3. Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

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  5. Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

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